Just Listen to the Crickets Sing
by Equestrienne Dreams
Summary: Love is stronger than fear - but is it stronger than distance? Brenda and Sharon confront separation, reunion, growing up, and (not) growing apart. Brenda/Sharon, "Friday Night"-verse.


**Author's Note:** _I am well aware - almost painfully so - that I am torturing all of you with the excruciatingly slow update pace of "Friday Night..."_

 _This isn't an accident._

 _It is also, believe it or not, not on purpose._

 _"Friday Night" is only just starting to get going. The main thrust of the plot is only just starting to kick in, and the debate, shockingly enough, has absolutely zero to do with said plot beyond getting Our Heroines talking to each other. It also deals with themes rather darker than your average High School AU, and the payoff for our girls is going to be a long time coming._

 _This is my apology for that._

 _This scene wouldn't leave my head, and I thought I'd share it all with you as a promise of where our ladies are going to wind up in the end - or close to it. It's set after the end of "Friday Night" proper but before the epilogue, and gives away no major plot points beyond the fact that Brenda and Sharon wind up together._

 _So this is an apology. And also a promise._

 _I hope you enjoy._

* * *

"And just where the hell do _you_ get off telling me what I can and cannot do?"

Icy rage had always been Sharon Raydor's specialty. It was seething from her now, chilling the warm summer air blooming inside the Beltway, and Brenda Leigh Johnson almost flinched from it.

Almost.

"It's common sense!" cried Brenda, tears already spilling down her cheeks. "You can't go running off to Paris for a semester! We have a _life_ here, Sharon, friends, our own place, _happiness…_ "

"Which is, of course, why you're in no way considering hightailing it to the other side of the world to spend a semester in Moscow?"

At that, Brenda crumpled. She sank to the sofa, fingers twisting helplessly in the flower-print cotton fabric of her skirt, and shook with sobs. "How did you – "

"I saw the letter," admitted Sharon, her anger beginning to thaw at last. "I was looking for the brownie mix and it fell out of the cupboard, and I couldn't – Brenda, why didn't you _tell_ me? I knew you wanted it, but you never said a word about actually going for it – and you were _accepted,_ and you didn't _say_ anything? _Why?_ "

"I didn't know if I was going to do it," said Brenda, finally. "I still don't. I _want_ to, Sharon, I do, but leaving you – " Her face twisted in an agony of grief, and she fell silent, unable to continue.

"Then why are you so against Paris?" asked Sharon, more gently this time. "It seems like the perfect time to me – both of us away at the same time, neither of us here alone while the other one is on the other side of the world – what could be more heaven-sent than that?"

"But you're supposed to be _here!_ " cried Brenda, fresh tears tracking down pale cheeks, staining the fair blonde hair brushing her face a darker honey color. " _Here,_ at _home,_ someone for me to come home to. I'm supposed to _know_ you're here, to have that to hold on to, when I'm crying myself to sleep and can't breathe from missing you!"

"Oh, baby," said Sharon at last, and crossed the room in three quick strides. She fell to her knees, gathering her girlfriend into her arms, and Brenda buried her face in Sharon's shoulder, fisted her hands in the soft knit of her sweater, and fell apart.

"Brenda, baby, I am not going to love you any less at the Sorbonne than I am here in D.C. I will _always_ be your home, and honey, you will always be mine." Gently she drew away, just enough to cup Brenda's tear-stained cheek in one hand, brushing the damp droplets away with her thumb. "Fifty miles or fifty thousand, nothing is going to change that. Not Paris, not Moscow, not _anything._ I love you, honey. I love you so much sometimes it scares me. And I won't lie – the idea of six months away from you terrifies me, too. But this – Brenda, you have to do this. You _deserve_ to do this. Even without this, you're an intelligence asset any one of half a dozen government agencies would kill to snap up. With it – with it, every alphabet soup agency in the federal government will be knocking down your door by the time you graduate. Don't you _dare_ give that up because of me. I'll still be here, Brenda, loving you, wanting you. I can't give you up. Not now. Not after feeling what we feel.

"Do you hear me? _I will still be here._ And when we're done, and we've Skyped six nights a week for six straight months, and you've been propositioned by half the Russian beauties in Moscow, and I've beat off the French guys with a stick, I will meet you there, and we'll walk the Kremlin walls and ride the Metro and visit St Basil's Cathedral and watch ballet at the Mariinsky, and you will show me everything you've lived while I wasn't with you. And then we'll fly back to Paris, and I'll take you up the Tour Eiffel and show you the Sorbonne, and we'll walk along the Seine and visit the Louvre and the Tuileries and eat the most delicious pastries known to mankind. And then we'll come home, to each other, every night, and wander the memorials and lounge on the Mall and sit under the moonlight on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and we will be so, _so_ grateful we did this."

Brenda blinked, her eyes red-rimmed, but a small smile was slowly starting to curl the corners of her mouth. "And why is that?"

"Because," said Sharon simply, "real love doesn't vanish when you don't get to hold it every night. It doesn't weaken, or break, or fade. Yes, I will miss you, more than I'd miss my own heart. But the one thing I won't stop doing is loving you. And if you think you won't be with me in every breath I ever take, no matter how far away you are, then you don't know me at all."

Brenda looked at her for a long, long moment, her heart naked in her warm calf-brown eyes, and then she kissed her. Desperate, starving, aching, gasping for it, and crying helplessly, her tears staining their lips salt-slick as they tumbled to the floor and held on like they'd die if they let go.

"I love you so _fucking_ much," gasped Brenda at last, and Sharon laughed, warm and lovely and so, so bright.

"Language, Brenda Leigh," she said, her eyes sparkling, and then they were kissing again, and Sharon was mapping her own declarations, her own promises, across the creamy expanse of Brenda's skin as future and past faded away to leave only the glorious, promise-filled present.

* * *

ONE YEAR LATER

Spring in Moscow was not, generally speaking, a pretty time of year.

In all fairness, in Moscow, not much was a pretty time of year. This far north, fog and rain alternated with fog and snow in a damp, chilly climate even the city's greatest admirers did not much admire.

Sharon Raydor was, needless to say, not one of the city's greatest admirers – and she couldn't say she wouldn't be at least partly relieved when their plane touched down at DeGaulle and Russia's usually-gloomy skies give way to warm French sunshine and the glittering waters of the Seine.

But today – today, the sky was clear, blue, and nearly cloudless, and if the wind was crisp and chilly, the only warmth she needed came from the heat of Brenda's hand held tight in her own.

Their bench, at the edge of a city park whose name Sharon couldn't pronounce (or, in fact, even read), overlooked the colourful onion tops of St Basil's. As Sharon had promised so many months ago, they had indeed walked the Kremlin's walls and visited the famous cathedral. Though no longer a house of worship, its gleaming towers still whispered with the faint prayers and echoing hymns of those who once had, and the city's odd mix of modern industrialism, Soviet-era dull practicality, and remnants of the nation's imperial past had been much more captivating – even entrancing – than Sharon had ever expected.

Of course, her tour guide might have had something to do with that. Brenda came alive here, chattering easily in Russian with university friends, guiding her effortlessly through the Metro, and simply looking as though, in some way, she had found peace with herself.

Sharon suspected, though they had never spoken of it, that learning their relationship could survive the distance had played a major part in that peace, but she also believed quite strongly that a large part of it was simply Brenda learning she could indeed survive on her own. She had, after all, gone straight from her parents' house to a college dormitory, and then to a tiny-but-spotless D.C. apartment with Sharon beginning their sophomore year; she had never been truly on her own until now, and the increased confidence with which she carried herself – and navigated a city she so clearly loved – had obviously done her more good than even Sharon could have suspected.

 _Not,_ she thought a bit wryly, _that she was the only one._ Life in Paris had been an education, not only in the language – though competent when she arrived, she was flawlessly fluent by the time she left – but in truly living on her own for the first time. Though more used to an empty house than Brenda, with her mother so often away, the realisation that she truly had no one but herself to depend on had given her a new appreciation for her own strength and self-reliance.

It had also showed her, beyond a doubt, that the only future she wanted was the one she shared with the woman sitting right next to her.

 _I love her,_ Sharon thought, and her breath caught a little in her throat. _I really, honest-to-God love her._

This was not new information. It was, in fact, something of which she had been almost painfully aware since the cataclysmic fall semester of their senior year, and something she had found returned to her with interest by the time of their high school graduation.

But six months apart from the frustrating, fragile, devious, hot-tempered, dazzling, impossibly beautiful mystery that was Brenda Leigh Johnson had opened a whole new window onto the truth of those feelings, and Sharon was only a little startled to feel the tears come to her eyes. Being loved by Brenda was somewhat like being loved by a forest fire; wild, hot, uncontrolled, and sometimes furious enough to burn, but once you'd felt it, you couldn't go back, because a few burns was a small price to pay for the sheer, brilliant, blazing intensity with which Brenda loved.

 _She is my future,_ she thought as the Moscow air swirled around her in contrast to the soft, warm weight of Brenda at her side, and knew without question that the only certain part of the rest of her life was also its best and strongest foundation.

"Hey." Brenda's shoulder gently bumped hers, and Sharon turned to look at her, helpless to stop the smile spreading across her face. "What're you thinking about?"

Squeezing her girlfriend's hand, Sharon let go to wrap her arm about Brenda's shoulders, hugging her close. Brenda let her head fall sideways, resting it on Sharon's shoulder and snuggling close, and Sharon breathed deep, the sweet scent of Brenda's hair mingling with the smokiness of roadside food vendors and the crisp, clean smell of the wind.

"Life," said Sharon at last. "And living. And how I don't want to think about either without you."

Brenda grabbed Sharon's free hand in hers and squeezed hard, looking up at her with open, unguarded eyes. "Then don't," she said simply. "I'm yours, for as long as you want me."

"How does 'always' sound?" asked Sharon breathlessly, and the only answer she'd ever need was in the bright, beaming sunshine of Brenda's smile.


End file.
